"It's all too fresh--it's been
too terrible for me--getting adjusted! I stand firm here, I feel the
ground under my feet. I don't want to go back to feeling all wrong, all
out of key, helpless to straighten matters!"
"But we were happy!" he said, a passionate regret in his voice. "Think
of our day in Chicago, Ju, and the day we took a hansom cab through
Central Park--and were afraid the driver wasn't sober! And do you
remember the blue hat that _would_ catch on the electric light, and the
day the elevator stuck?"
"I think of it all so often, Jim," Julia answered, with a smile as sad
as tears could have been, and in the tender voice she might have used in
speaking of the dead. "Sometimes I fit whole days together, just
thinking of those old times. 'Then what did we do after that lunch?' I
think, or 'Where were we going that night that we were in such a hurry?'
and then by degrees it all comes back." Julia drew a rose toward her on
a tall bush, studied its leaves critically. "That was the happiest time,
wasn't it, Jim?" she asked, with her April smile.
Jim felt as if a weight of inevitable sorrow were weighing him to the
ground.
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